In the course of the last several centuries, the trend in clothing has been moving away from personalized custom-made articles to mass-produced, standardized products. Instead of products being designed and fitted to a particular consumer, consumers now have to choose from pre-manufactured products that happen to fit them. In order to simplify this selection process, a labeling system has been developed in the clothing industry. This labeling system somewhat standardizes and facilitates the fitting process. Thus, clothing items like T-shirts are usually identified by standard designations such as S, M, L, XL, etc. Other items are designated by more than one identifier. For example, shoes may be identified by the length, as well as the width. The pants are commonly identified by the waist size, the length, and sometimes the fit.
Various mass-produced items other than clothing are also identified by several pre-set characteristics. For example, a customizable table top sold in a store like IKEA (the name IKEA is a trademark of INGKA Holding B.V. and Interogo Foundation) may be available in several sizes, with varying length, width, thickness and color. Chicken eggs sold by a farmer may be sorted according to such identifiers as the size (S, M, L), yolk firmness (A, AA, AAA), freshness, color, etc.
The clothing and product labels were designed with the purpose of assisting the consumer in finding the right product. Traditionally, a consumer would know whether he/she wears large or small apparels or buys AA or A-grade eggs. Once the consumer would locate one or more products with the appropriate label, the consumer would try on, or visually inspect the product to gauge whether this particular size or class meets his or her requirements. That is, the consumer would be guided to the right product by the tag, but would ultimately select it based on the hands-on personal selection and inspection. The consumers would know that sizing on certain items runs smaller or larger than they expect, and requires additional inspection. Such an approach worked well when most products were selected by consumers in stores. However, with the onset of the Internet age, more and more products are now being sold and purchased online. More and more customers are ordering products online, from clothing, to electronics, to groceries. These are that products that consumers have no opportunity to try on, handle or even personally see before buying.
The development on internet shopping has put new pressures on manufacturers of the products sold online, and particularly clothing manufacturers. Now, more than ever before, the customers have to rely on standardized identification and description of products provided by the manufacturers and copied verbatim by the retailers. And that is why an increasing number of government regulations are being set in place to assure extensive disclosure of product's characteristics on labels. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission already imposes a number of regulations on labeling, requiring extensive disclosure by the manufacturer. Even greater label disclosure requirements are expected in the future. Such disclosure requirements naturally require a greater number of labels, with greater number of information fields.
There are also commercial pressures. If items' identification/description is not accurate, the customer will be disappointed with the store and the brand. The customer will also ship back and return the items, imposing considerable additional costs on retailers and manufacturers (who often pay for shipping and to whom the items are eventually returned). So, there is a considerable incentive and pressure on retailers to describe the products, and particularly items of clothing, as accurately as possible, with as many details/characteristics as possible.
For example, since the consumer can not try on a pair of pants, he/she need to be informed of not only the waist width, and inseam length of the pant, but also preferably the fit, the number of threads, the exact color (since monitors do not always display color correctly), as well as other characteristics. For the retailer to reveal as many of the garment's characteristics as possible, such characteristics must be provided by the manufacturer. Since clothing frequently comes without individual packaging, becomes separated from packaging, and since retailers usually order a great number of sizes/variations of the same item of apparel in the same container, such information is usually and most conveniently provided by labels, attached to each individual piece of clothing.
The more characteristics the manufacturers have to reveal, the more individual labels they have to attach to clothing. The reason that several tags have to be attached is that individual characteristics vary in the batch of manufactured clothing items of the same design. For example, some of the pants of the same design will have a waist of 30, others waist 32, yet others waist 34, and so one. Some of the pants with waist 30 will have a length of 30, others will have the length of 32, 34, etc. Some will have a slightly different fit. The pants may be of same style, but different color. Different color may require different washing and care instructions. With all the different characteristics in a batch of pants, there is a tremendous number of permutations possible, all of which have to be indicated on the labels.
The more labels the manufacturer has to put on the item, the more expensive the item becomes. Labels themselves are expensive. Attaching each label takes time, labor and expense. Multiple labels may also destroy the aesthetic appeal of the article of clothing, or make it uncomfortable to wear. Also, the manufacturer can not always predict the exact demand for each variation of the design. Therefore, the manufacturer may be left with too many labels he or she does not need, and run out of the proper ones. In the latter situation, even if the manufacturer can manufacture an item to keep up with demand, he or she will not be able to ship the item until more tags are ordered and attached. The unneeded extra tags will have to be discarded, becoming a waste of money and a burden to the environment.
Manufacturers may elect to manufacture and attach a single label with all the information onto each piece of clothing. However, such approach requires the design and manufacture of a great variety of labels—one type of label for each permutation of the article produced. For example, in a batch where there are only four labeling characteristics, including 15 waist sizes, 10 length sizes, 4 fit types and 3 colors, the manufacturer faces 1,800 labeling possibilities. This means that if the manufacturer is only attaching one label to each pair of pants, he or she will have to order and pay for almost two thousand varieties of labels, some of which will be required in much greater quantities than others.
The design and manufacture of such great variety labels is expensive. Sorting and attaching the proper label to the proper variety is time-consuming and fraught with errors. While the use of such labels may be feasible in large-scale productions, where tens of thousands of articles with each permutation are produced, it is not economically practical if a relatively small number of each design permutation is manufactured. In such a small production run, only a small number of each type of labels will be produced, but the manufacturer must pay separately for design and printing/production of every label permutation. This is extremely expensive and inefficient for small-to-medium scale clothing manufacture.
Furthermore, the attachment of traditional labels is often inconsistent with the article design. Some clothing lines do not have the traditional inseams, into which the labels can be sewn. Other garments feature unusual and revolutionary design, where traditional labels with small standard text just visually destroy the novelty and uniqueness of the article, thus reducing the manufacturer's sales and profits.
Therefore, there is a long-felt and unmet need in the art for a universal customizable label that can be applied to a variety of similar products, and adapted to reflect one or more individual characteristics of each particular variety. Such label must be inexpensive to produce, easy to customize, provide potentially numerous customization options, be easy to attach, and aesthetically pleasing. The label of the present invention meets all of these requirements and provides numerous additional benefits.